Asimilarsetofassumptions characterizes Hardtand Negri's conceptofmultitude. They expand the characteristics of postindustrial production onto the multitude and claim that “[w]hat the multitude produces is not just goods orservices; the multitude also and most importantly produces cooperation, communication, forms of life, and social relationships" (Hardt and Negri2005:339). Further, Hardt and Negri ascribe an autonomous character to the subjectivities that are produced through cognitive labor mainly due toits assumed collective nature. “Such new forms of labor.. . present new possibilities for economic self-management, since the mechanisms of cooperation necessary for production are contained in the labor itself"(Hardtand Negri 2004: 336). This characteristic of the immaterial labor is presented in distinct contrast to the industrial notion of the labor power, which is considered“variable capital" in Marxist terms of political economy, since it can be activated and formed as a productive force only by capital.
However, I believe the crowdsourcing apparatus, with its unique configuration, challenges all of these assumptions and essentially negates the essentialist distinction between the industrial and postindustrial configuration of labor. In digital labor markets maintained by crowdsourcing protocols, crowds are subjected to a form of division of labor that is reminiscent of industrial production. But this division of labor differsfrom the industrial division of labor in terms of its effects in its relation to the global neoliberal socioeconomic formations that constitute a distinct condition for the workers of the global South. These conditions could be described as the gray zones of international laws that are designed by neoliberal policies to take advantage of stark regional differences inlabor costs, which Aihwa Ong conceptualizes as “system of exception."
Crowdsourcing as a Neoliberal Exception Apparatus
Aihwa Ong describes neoliberalism as a global system of exception, borrowing a term from German political theorist Carl Schmitt. The state of exception, in the Schmittian sense, defines a political liminality that is established outside of the juridical order, created by the sovereign rule. Ong, similar to Schmitt's description, emphasizes inclusive as well as exclusive aspectsof neoliberal political formations, because these exceptions primarily work for making decisions outside of a consistent legislative framework. She formulates the neoliberal exception in relation to “the interplay among technologies of governing and of disciplining, of inclusion and exclusion, of giving value or denying value to human conduct"(Ong 2006: 5). A significant example of these technologies of exclusion is labor arbitrage.
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Interrogating Modes of Digital Labor